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“You’re not allowed here,” an aide says to Misty, eyes wide, darting around as if she might be able to call for someone.
“What are you talking about, silly?”
“There’s a sign. Um. Refusing to allow you in.”
“What, with a big red circle with a line through it superimposed over my face? That’s crazy, Taissa is my friend.”
(Unbeknownst to Misty, there is in fact a sign exactly like that, and it is in fact what the aide is referencing, but she is too scared to say this)
“It’s fine, Jen,” Taissa says, and breezes through, and Misty beams.
“See?” She can’t help but stick her tongue out at the aide.
“We need all the help we can get in these last few days,” Taissa whispers, an aside.
“All right, follow me.” Jen gestures for Misty to follow her, and Taissa keeps her eye on the door and hopes that this will work.
***
The office is more or less what Shauna expected: gray, dry, full of blue posters and well-meaning young Democrats, with some near-imperceptible hum of heaters in the background.
There are stress balls, and Shauna picks one up.
“Shauna,” Taissa says.
“I’m here too,” Natalie pipes up, a drawl.
“I figured that, erm, it might be better if we…stayed together.” With a glance at the sweet and nearly pre-pubescent staffer, she adds, “to support you.”
Taissa stares at the scene in front of her - three Yellowjackets, probably more than there have ever been in this office - and Shauna can see the gears turning in her head, the risk-versus-reward calculations she’s making. It’s the sort of thing she’d do on the field, before. It’s why she was nearly captain.
“Right.”
***
“This doesn’t seem more suspicious to anyone?” Natalie grunts. With a cigarette pinched between her fingers and her whole body flopping back in a rickety little plastic chair, she looks like some artist’s rendition of Americana.
“You’re not allowed to smoke in here.”
“If I open a window, will you stop getting on my ass about it, Madame President?”
“Fine.” There are more pressing battles to fight, murders to cover up. The life that Taissa Turner has very carefully built up and the three people who could destroy it, sitting across from her.
“Fuck’s sake, is this locked?”
“So, we have a script prepared,” sweet Jen, who deserves a raise but won’t get one because the campaign’s funds are low, have always been low, passes out looseleaf sheets of paper, splays them out in front of the newcomers. “And we have a program that dials constituents instantly, so you don’t have to manually call every number and end up with a hundred voicemails. We learned how not to make that mistake after the Clinton campaign!” Jen laughs at her own joke as if she was old enough to vote during the Clinton campaign.
“Ow! Son of a bitch!” Natalie wrings out her hand, pointer-finger nail chipped from trying to crack open the window via sheer force, and red dots of blood land on the walls, the window, her hand.
“We have a first-aid kit in the office,” Jen says.
“No, it’s fine, just a broken nail.” She curls it into a fist, blood seeping out between her fingers, and the other three Yellowjackets try not to stare.
Taissa is not above phone banking for her own campaign; she’s done it before (for team building, for nights when she doesn’t want to face Simone), she still doesn’t want to do it right now. Half her constituents probably unplug their phones at this point, to say nothing of all the teens and college kids who don’t have landlines at all, who keep their whole lives in their pockets.
(When she wants to pick at the wound until it hurts, she wonders if things would have been different if they’d crashed now. If they’d been able to call someone, a backup to that smashed-up flight transmitter they found right before leaving behind the plane for good)
(But then, what-ifs get you nowhere – something she’s never been able to impart upon Shauna, or any of the others for that matter.)
(Or on herself. But it’s not about that.)
It’s going to be a long night.
***
Shauna recognizes the office, vaguely – it’s one of many in a building, one of those ugly things that houses everything from psychiatrists’ offices to ballet studios to barbershops. Probably she’s been in this building before; probably she’s been in every building in Wiskayok, at some point or another.
Still, Tai’s done her best to make it…not homey, exactly, but nice-looking. Her own. A single family photograph (staged) of Tai, Simone, and Sammy, propped jauntily against one wall. Campaign posters everywhere, obviously. One lifesize cardboard cutout that, if they were still friends, if everything was different, would be a source of endless good-hearted teasing.
“I’ll be in the other room going over numbers if anyone needs anything,” the aide (Jen?) finishes up, the tail-end of a speech that Shauna did not pay any attention to.
When Misty and Natalie are busy setting up the computers, Shauna hazards a look at Taissa, her back straight, her gaze distant and weary. For a moment she wonders if it’s the other one - if she’s sleepwalking, here, now - but, no. She’s just exhausted.
“Hey,” Shauna whispers, and squeezes her hand, like they’re kids. “You okay?”
Taissa breathes in, once, sharp, and then turns away.
“I’m fine,” she says, and that’s that.
***
“Who even fucking reads these?” Natalie groans, holding up her phone, which is now on Taissa’s mailing list and therefore suspect to her text chains. The latest one says, with a grimacing photo of Taissa against a white background:
Natalie! It’s Taissa Turner. Can I count on your support on Election Day to stop wolves like Phil Bathurst from destroying our great state of New Jersey? Every donation helps me help you out of the wilderness and into financial prosperity. Text WOODS to 25253 for more information.
“Enough people that they paid for some service to do those. Just block it and move on.”
“Oh, you’re still bleeding,” Misty says, and she sounds exactly like she did at seventeen, gap-toothed and hungry, a liege to the little queendom of a soccer team they had. “Let me get the first-aid kit, I saw it on my way in.”
“You know what. Sure.”
“Follow me.” Misty stands up, makes a show of stretching even though she’s only been sitting for like twenty minutes. In that time she’s made five calls and threatened three people with grievous bodily harm and the smile has not left her face even once.
And Natalie follows, but not before shrugging a big shrug at Taissa and Shauna, to say, I’m just playing along.
“I can’t believe she didn’t let me into this beforehand,” Misty says, leading the way like she’s been here before. Natalie wonders if she has. It’s pretty likely. “I would have been amazing.”
“Yeah, I don’t doubt it.” Somehow she’s not being sarcastic. The blood’s dried on her fingers, mostly, crusty and red-brown. It’s not pretty but it’s nothing to worry about.
“Here we go!” Misty plucks the kit from under someone’s desk, wiggles her fingers like she’s about to do an operation. Natalie sits on it, obedient, muscle memory kicking in or some infernal shit like that.
“So you’re, what, a nurse now or something?” They’ve gone on a road trip together, they’ve spent more time in the past few months together than apart, and yet Natalie doesn’t know what she does for a living.
“Well, that’s my day job.” Misty produces a roll of gauze, yanks just enough of it to wrap around her fingers. Frugal with it. “As you’ve seen, my real occupation is Citizen Detective, but that doesn’t pay all the bills, and our settlement pay after the crash only takes you so far.”
“Uh-huh.” Natalie holds out her hand, and Misty drips a bit of rubbing alcohol on a little cloth. She wonders what kinds of things Tai expects to run into in this office. “This’ll sting for a second.”
“Believe it or not, I’ve been injured before.”
“Oh, yes, I remember.” A delicate touch, at first, and then she plunges the cloth into the space where Natalie’s nail was until half an hour ago and it hurts like hell. “Even before the crash, you were reckless, it would drive Coach Martinez crazy, he was always so scared that you’d get really hurt before a big game.”
The name comes like a gut punch and Natalie has to remind herself to breathe.
“Okay, that should be good.” Misty takes one of the strips of gauze, starts with Natalie’s ring finger first. This feels ridiculously intimate, for reasons she doesn’t want to think about. Misty’s hands aren’t soft, they’re not lovely - chipped nails, crackly skin (probably from being stuck in dry hospitals all day), a tighter grip than you’d expect. A single scar from the plane debris on one of her knuckles.
“Thanks.”
“Next one.”
And Natalie holds up the next one.
“You know,” and this with a look up at her, like a knight to a queen, middle finger mummified, “most windows have handles nowadays. You didn’t need to pry it open with your nails.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Misty lifts up her last one - pointer finger, the one where the whole fucking nail is gone - and pauses.
“I know the circumstances weren’t ideal.”
“That’s one way of saying we were blackmailed.”
“But I did miss you. I mean, I missed all of you, but it was much easier to keep tabs on Taissa and Shauna, you know, since they still live around here, whereas you were always moving everywhere. It’s been - let’s call it a silver lining.”
“Pfft, yeah.” Natalie rolls her eyes, but, damn her, she cares. She can’t look away completely.
“I mean it.” Misty inspects her handiwork - half of Natalie’s hand, bandaged tight, with only a little blood coming through. It feels a little like she’s being squeezed. Misty’s own hand is warm, where she’s touching it.
“Thank you, Misty,” Natalie exhales, and stands up, and this time Misty is the one who follows her.
***
Misty Quigley is no stranger to phone banking.
Undeterred by the fact that Taissa surely wouldn’t let her into her campaign office, having blocked her number just because she “doesn’t understand boundaries” and “crashed Sammy’s baby shower uninvited” and “poisoned us at least once” she’s spent the past several months participating in grassroots efforts via Zoom and other, less conventional methods she needn’t get into here. Occasionally she will slip in that she went to high school with the senator-to-be, and she will downplay the Yellowjackets of it all. Oh, no, we barely knew each other, a lie that grows bitter in her mouth, I just passed her in the hallways sometimes, but it’s so amazing what she’s doing for this community, and most people believe it, even though a quick look at any book about the tragedy will include a list of the survivors, in the back, a reward for making it through.
“Oh, I’m so sorry I missed you,” she says to a snide voicemail, “but it’s important to vote for who’s going to represent you and your children - Regina and Pete, right? Such cute names.”
“We don’t leave messages,” Taissa calls from across the table. Misty rolls her eyes.
“Quality over quantity, Tai, now when they get home they’ll see it.”
“There’s a protocol for a reason,” Taissa shoots back.
“You’re telling me. The gerrymandering in this district is a mess.” Misty dials the next number (or, rather, she clicks NEXT NUMBER on the computer, because there is no finesse in anything these days) and waits for the dial tone. “Hi, I’m representing Taissa Turner for State Senate, I wanted to make sure you knew all about your polling places. There’s a lovely one right up the street from your house.”
(Occasionally she will look at Natalie across the table, and see her expertly-gauzed hand drumming on a table as she waits out the dial tone, and she will feel a little proud and a little warm and a lot like a schoolgirl with a crush)
***
“--get this number? Don’t call me again. You hear me? DON’T CALL ME-”
“Another Bathurst voter,” Shauna announces, and marks it down on her Post-It. Thirteen whole Turner voters - the rest of them either hung up as soon as she started her spiel or started yelling in her ear.
It is late, and Shauna’s eyes hurt, and she wonders when she got old. Oh, you survived eighteen months in the Canadian woods, you killed your best friend and you consumed her body and you made a god out of a girl and you hurt and you hurt and you hurt, and now you want to sleep at ten P.M.
The staff have all gone home.
“I’m not going home,” Taissa says, breaking the silence.
“Cheers to that, brother,” Natalie crows, and hefts a bottle of champagne up. Taissa grabs it from her.
“Give me that,” she hisses, “it’s for the celebration.”
Natalie takes the bottle back, swirls it around.
“What happens if you lose?”
“We’ll still drink it, I guess.”
“Ah, drowning your sorrows. If we haven’t all been thrown in the slammer for manslaughter by then you might want to invite me.”
“Ha-ha.” Taissa tucks the champagne under the desk - not, Shauna notes, so far away that she can’t drink from it herself. Nicely played, Turner.
“I don’t think you’ll lose, though,” Misty pipes up. She is, as usual, the only one who seems to be having a good time. “The polls are neck-and-neck, but a lot of your support comes from younger voters, who aren’t known for responding to polling inquiries much, so you have a shadow constituency.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Taissa says, clearly not at all swayed. Shauna doesn’t know why she can still read her. She thinks about that kids’ movie, Inside Out, that Callie dragged her to when she was ten. The demolition crew, little teal blobs, that sucked out useless memories. Hers must not have gotten the memo – that she doesn’t have a reason to know these things anymore.
***
“Yes, this is actually her. Unlike my opponent, I’m willing to put in the effort to speak directly to voters about the issues that matter to them.”
The woman on the other side of the line is older, scratchy-voiced, with shit cell service. Taissa has to strain to hear anything she’s saying. “You – big promises–”
“I do,” she says, smoothly bullshitting her way through whatever that sentence was. “Because I know that I can make a difference.”
“Can’t– you did–”
“You may not agree with all of my policies, and they might seem radical to some. But I care.”
“You did– you did– you—”
Something seizes her, something old and horrible, and Taissa has to keep her hands steady.
“I think you’re breaking up.”
“Did you– did you– leave her–”
“Is this a troll?”
“Come back— you’re not—”
“Stop it.”
“It’s– you– still here—”
“For fuck’s sake.” Taissa hits NEXT NUMBER with more force than she needs to. Shauna gives her one of those unending are-you-okay looks that she seems to have in spades. “It’s fine,” she explains, before Shauna can actually ask her. “Just some asshole trying to get under my skin.”
“You could stay at my place tonight,” Shauna murmurs, quiet enough that Misty and Natalie - caught up in whatever they have going on - don’t notice. “If you don’t want to go home. But I think if I have to listen to one more of these guys, I’ll kill one of them, so I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling.”
And Tai is so, so tired.
That’s the reason she gives for saying yes.
***
Shauna is halfway across the parking lot, Lyft app open on her phone because she doesn't trust it to remember her if she closes it, when Taissa finally asks her the question that’s hung over them both like a guillotine all night.
“Why did you actually come here?”
“I meant what I said. It’s safer if we’re here in a group - in case the- blackmailer- shows up again.” She doesn’t need to know, of course, that “the blackmailer” sent in his ballot early, that he’s watching Judge Judy at home. “His associates, I mean.”
“Or it could be suspicious.”
There’s a single measly drop of rainwater that plops inelegantly onto the pavement. Shauna’s imaginary college poet lover would’ve written something about that.
“Fine, Tai. Do you want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“I did it for you. Okay? You mentioned your- sleepwalking thing, and I thought this would be a nice way to keep an eye on you in case it started happening again.”
“Misty’s driving me home, if I haven’t called back in two hours I’ve probably been mur-dered!” Natalie crows from across the parking lot. Misty swats her on the arm. Taissa stares.
“You didn’t have to do that-”
“And, yes, it was also so we could all keep an eye on each other and have an alibi just in case because I’m worried it’s going to get very bad but I’m also just- worried about you.”
“You don’t need to worry about me.”
“I do. You’re-” and it sounds juvenile, small, but it’s all she can say “-you’re my friend. I don’t want you to hurt.”
“I guess that explains why you didn’t turn up at any of the phone banks until this one.”
“I mean, Natalie’s staying at the inn, and Misty lives…somewhere, I don’t actually know where, I try to stay out of her way.” Maybe it’s the fucking murder, the blackmail, or the fact that her brain’s spent all its energy writing the same letter for two and a half hours, but Shauna feels like being honest, for once. “I tried to stay out of your way.”
“I know.” Taissa picks at the dirt under her nails, frowns to herself. “You didn’t come to Sammy’s baby shower.”
“Well, I mean, what would I have said? ‘Hi, Tai’s friends. I’m one of the soccer cannibals she spent a year and a half in the woods with!’ Before…this we weren’t supposed to see each other at all.” There’s a little bit of snow on the ground, remnants of a flurry Shauna must’ve slept through. “And you didn’t come to Callie’s baby shower either.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Probably for the best,” Shauna echoes.
“Thank you,” Taissa says, breaking the silence.
“Yeah. Of course. I mean.” Shauna huffs out a laugh. “We’re already fucked. Everyone’s seen us together. We might as well help you out, right?”
They were best friends, once. They still are, in that very different way adults are best friends.
“Right.”
Shauna glances down at the phone again. Her Lyft driver - one Manny - has been stuck at the same red light for the past five minutes.
“I missed you,” Shauna says.
“I missed you too.”
“I mean, it only took, what, twenty years and a blackmail case to get us to see each other again?” Shauna forces a laugh, even though none of it is funny and none of it has been funny for a long, long time. “We should’ve just gotten brunch.”
“We wouldn’t have gotten brunch.”
“We could have. You know the Denny’s we’d go to after practice is still open?”
“No.” Tai leans in, almost delighted.
“Yes! Callie had me pick her up from play rehearsal - she did theater in middle school, it was awful - and drive her there and it was the same exact one. Same owner and everything. It was like a time capsule, it was so creepy.”
“You’d have to pay me to go back to a Denny’s full of high schoolers.”
“Something classier, then. The Blue Bird Café.” Anything to keep them talking around the truth. Anything to keep them here. It hurts, how much she missed her. It would be so easy to write theirs off as a friendship of convenience, one that never would've been anything if they hadn't been stuck together for eighteen months, but it's been two and a half decades and they're still here, instead of anywhere else.
“Don’t do this, Shauna.”
“I-I mean, what happens after this election? You’ll win, hopefully, or else we just spent eight hours for nothing, and because you didn’t listen to what we all agreed to, you’ll be a public figure. We might as well make the best of that, right?” Might as well, over and over again. As in, to hell with it, why not, what means anything anymore? Nihilistic, maybe, or else Shauna just misses her best friend.
“Maybe.”
“You’re going to win,” Shauna repeats. “You deserve to.”
A car - neither of theirs, and not Shauna’s Lyft guy either, since he appears to have gotten lost and looped further away from their parking lot - passes by, and it illuminates Taissa like a halo.
“Do we all get what we deserve?”
***
The inn is full of people who have weird sex. Tonight’s tenants - a perennially chipper woman in scrubs and the sulky smoker behind her - are no exception.
Not that they'll talk about it later. Of course not.
***
“I think we should,” Shauna says slowly, “and we don’t. But your polling numbers are good. Especially if Misty wasn’t just making it up about the shadow constituents.”
“She probably was.”
“Probably.”
Finally, the Lyft pulls into the lot, and they stop talking for a little while, because there's so much to say still, and there's nothing left to say at all.
***
Taissa gathers up her things the next morning, feeling like a teenager again. Usually it was the other way around for her - Van would sneak into her place, it being a larger house and therefore easier to hide girls in. Van in her boxers and t-shirt, ruddy-cheeked and grinning, before she slid out the second-story window and dropped to the front. Somehow she never got off with worse than a sprained ankle.
Shauna’s in the kitchen when she heads downstairs, surrounded by those creepy ceramic rabbits that Tai’s certain are gifts from the Taylors. Small mercies: she hasn’t seen them since Shauna’s wedding.
“Oh, good morning,” she says, like this happens every day.
“I should get back to the campaign office,” Tai explains, “before anyone notices I was gone. Or, you know. That I slept.”
“Taking another Lyft?”
“I’ll walk.” The office isn’t close, but it’s close enough.
“All right.”
That seems to be it - Taissa pushes open the front door, starts out into the sun. And then–
“Tai!” Shauna calls out. Taissa turns around. “Save me a bottle of that champagne when you win.”
And for the first time in days, the Senator smiles.